Thackeray told me, last night, you had gone to Norfolk,—“near Beccles” I remember, but nothing farther: so we must go by Woodbridge
according to the old route.1

You have probably bethought you of Squire, the “rusty old gentn dug out of the 17th century”;2 and are scheming out a visit to him. Alas, it is now more than half in vain! Read these two letters of his; read No 1,—fancy that I got, copied in Squire's indistinct way, and mostly without dates, some Ten or Twelve of the most curious
Letters of Oliver I have even3 read (all about the Lincolnshire wars, about seizing of spies and “pistolling” them, buying of horses, helmets, “velvet gowns”
for his wife &c &c); that I wrote instantly to Squire, in consequence, offering to pledge my life and fortune for these old
Papers of his, if he would but lend them me for three weeks, and that I then received (along with some old fractions of muster-rolls, and without either the “List” or the “autographs” there mentioned having ever shewed face here) Squire's letter No2,—which you can now read, and weep! Did you ever hear of such a distracted old gentn? Did such a vexation ever befal in the search into English History before? He might have sold his Cromwell autographs in the market for probably £150: his Manuscript itself, had it been mine, I would not have seen burnt
for £1000. What a pity: on Thursday last one might have copied; now on Tuesday all the Queen's forces cannot recover a line
of it!— We must console ourself the best we may.4

I suppose it is now of little use, of comparatively little, that you shd call on Squire: yet I wish you would, if it is not very far out of your road; you might still perhaps contribute to save
some fractions that may remain,—beg a copy of them all: the wretched man does not know what any scratch of a pen by that old
hand may do for one in the utter darkness! Let him for God's sake destroy nothing more,—tho' his “resolution” is so terribly
resolute, the strong-minded old gentn! Besides one would like to know what manner of man he is or can be; this itself would be a kind of mournful satisfaction.
For the rest, unless he is absolutely insane, which I do not at all yet find, you will probably have no difficulty in getting to him. I have announced you, with due description
and flourish of drums, twice over, and this morning I said you were near him, and would perhaps call.

If you can, now or afterwards, do anything in these Peterborough affairs, well: if not, let them go to the Devil; “pistol”
them,—one gets nothing but sorrow and stupidity out of them! Dawson Turner5 has already shot, and hit nothing. Adieu

1. FitzGerald had been in London for about ten days in May, apparently having seen TC (see Terhune, LEF 1:560). He returned to Boulge Cottage, and then, in mid-June, visited his sister. Mary Eleanor Kerrich (1805–63), at Geldestone Hall, Norfolk, nr. Beccles. TC means that he must address his letter to Boulge Cottage.

4. Neither of Squire's letters is extant; but TC told what happened in his “Thirty-Five Unpublished Letters of Oliver Cromwell,”
Fraser's Magazine 36 (Dec. 1847):631–54 (Works 7:339–76), and in his account of meeting Squire, written 25–27 Jan. and 5 Feb. 1849 (Wright, SP 330–40). Squire claimed to have found a great hoard of family papers in the window seat of his grandfather's house in Peterborough
when he was about seventeen. These included his ancestor Samuel Squire's civil war “‘Journal’ or Diary,” interleaved with
letters from Cromwell, which were “stuck in.” They were “moth-eaten,” mouse-nibbled and dirty, and did not come into his possession until about 1840, by which time his mother had used some of them to light the fire. He left them in store in the Pantechnicon, London. After
opening communication with TC, Squire was in London, as TC recorded, ‘in June 1847, and at leisure for a day or two,’ he copied out the Cromwell Letters for me; and then, in a wrathful mood (he jerked his hand to signify so much), burnt all the rest. … Of the original Journal, and other old S. Squire Papers, at home or elsewhere, there remained no shred unburnt” (SP 335). He said he was afraid of family disagreements. In 1849 he set out to bring TC some signatures formerly clipped from the papers, but alleged he lost them on the way (Wright, SP 335). In the account in Fraser's TC explains that there were two letters from Squire in June: the first came with the packet of Cromwell letters, “copied accurately,” and with some notes; the second, in reply to TC's
“almost passionate request” to see the Journal, reported it was “ashes” (633–34). It is not clear why TC should tell FitzGerald that there were only ten or twelve letters.